Near the top of many progressive, creatives‘ lists one will find San Francisco or New York City. Why? Because there’s raw excitement in living in a trendsetting city - experiencing the future in the present. From Smart cars to Yelp! to flash mobs - you’ll find them first, exclusively or most prevalently in such a city. So what’s the latest sign of things to come? Weekend pedestrian-only streets.

Spurred by an international movement to close major urban thoroughfares to cars and allowing only

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It’s not a model for supporting local independent businesses, certainly not a natural cultural district, and its website opens with the words “Greed, lust and gluttony… and that’s only dinner”, but Kansas City’s new $800 million ‘corporate cultural district’ does provide clear evidence that there’s a growing market for pedestrian-only districts in downtowns.

The nine block Power & Light District is a one developer, formula-driven entertainment zone that will be largely familiar to residents

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The internet will never replace a sense of community based on face-face relationships, but it’s progressing rapidly as far as being a more effective complement to facilitate that face-face sense of community.

First you had email listservs/mailing lists where everyone receives everyone else’s messages to the group, which quickly compared to spam, followed by online message boards, but required thousands of users to make it work.

Then along came Web 2.0 with MySpace and Facebook, which

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What’s leading economic growth in our cities?

Robert Litan, VP of Research and Policy at the Kaufmann Foundation* and director of Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution**, concludes that more of our growth today is generated by entrepreneurial or newer companies. He answers the following question in this interview from Smart City Radio:

Smart City Radio: “If you were advising a local urban leader on how he or she could encourage the start up of businesses that would have a good chance

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As you can see by the graph, bicycle production is enjoying a renaissance, increasing in each of the last six years while car production has remained steady in growth. Much of the recent growth has been driven by the rise gas prices as well as in electric bike production, which has doubled to 21 million units in the last three years. Since 1970, bicycle output quadrupled while car production doubled.

The city of Copenhagen (pictured) plans to invest more than $200 million in bike facilities

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You’ve heard of live-work units where owners either live about their workplace or have extra room to work in their living space. However, how about a live-cowork space? That’s the Hat Factory in San Francisco.

In the evenings the Hat Factory (word on the street was that a former tenant made hats there) is home to three tech-oriented workers, but during business hours they open it up to about seven other untethered workers. As you can see, it has a much more lived-in feel than most coworking

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So what’s the delivery truck equivalent of the bicycle? Look no further than Paris, the home of 20,000 shared bikes, and there you’ll find La Petite Reine, a delivery company that utilizes a fleet of 60 Cargocycles.

With a delivery capacity of 400 lbs. and 50 cubic feet within an 18-mile delivery radius, La Petite Reine completes 2500 deliveries every day for larger corporate partners like DHL that can’t access the more intimate street networks of more pedestrian-oriented downtowns.

‘La

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Not to be outdone by the smallest coolest apartments in the U.S. brought to you by Apartment Therapy, here are the international winners:

First place (topmost image) - Nicolas’ Mini Loft, Lille, France, 630 s.f. “I keep things that are useful or important to me, and get rid of the rest : no extra room to accumulate! You feel lighter when you don’t own too much stuff!...“

Second place - Aad’s Compact Dwelling (Suitable for Laziness), Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 624 s.f. “This particular

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It’s that time of year again to check out the winners of Apartment Therapy’s Small Cool 2008 contest to discover the smallest (under 850 s.f.), coolest apartments in the U.S.

First place (topmost image) - Tony and Hilary’s 3 in 1 Studio, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NY, 460 s.f. “Living here as a couple with a cat, we have enough space to store everything we need without sacrificing comfort.“

Second place - Jordan’s Ordo Ab Chao, Los Angeles, CA, 412 s.f. apartment rental. Note the office nook in

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There’s a ton of buzz on green communities sprouting up everywhere, and while the US Green Building Council provides LEED standards for neighborhoods, it’s not nearly the benchmark that the BioRegional Development Group provides. Their ten One Planet Living Communities principles start at zero net carbon and go from there:

Zero Carbon - Zero net CO2 commissions via on-site renewable energy, supplemented by off-site renewable energy if needed.
Zero Waste - Eliminate need for landfill or

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